Account Executive - Services

Role overview

Account Executive - Services at Cisco

Develops and manages strategies for highly complex, multi-faceted deals and leads complex negotiations.

Responsibilities

• Champions service sales for a strategic Region or set of accounts, cultivating deep relationships with key customers, and influencing account growth and the customer lifecycle.
• Tailors engagement strategies to activate Champions, reflect buyer’s Decision Criteria, and anticipate the expectations of the Economic Buyer .
• Guides teams in engaging C-suite Economic Buyers, activating cross-business Champions, and owning the Paper Process.
• Locks preference by tying Cisco’s portfolio to enterprise-wide Decision Criteria.
• Influences discovery strategies, championing innovative approaches that help unlock customer value through services.
• Co-develops initiatives to ensure Cisco’s consistent alignment with customer expectations, services standards and communication protocols.
• Advances insight-driven strategies that strengthen engagement and accelerate service uptake .
• Develops strategies to enhance communication and accountability across teams, maintaining focus on customer satisfaction.
• Directs initiatives to adapt future focused service offerings to better meet evolving customer objectives and expand account through lifecycle selling.
• Creates strategies grounded in the E2E selling methodology to elevate team knowledge, boost effectiveness, and deliver greater customer value and impact.
• Develops strategies for fostering collaboration across the organization, ensuring integrated efforts aligned with required customer intimacy.
• Designs methodologies that enable future process optimization and strengthen forecasting precision.
• Develops initiatives to cultivate gravitas in customer engagements, ensuring teams communicate with clarity, credibility and strategic alignment.
• Outstanding relationships with C-levels within customer account, and the ability to strongly influence account managers, specialists, and channels, with consistent display of technical knowledge.
• Minimum Qualifications. 10 years of successful sales experience managing large strategic account, building and developing sales relationships to a CXO level in a growing business environment such as Cisco or in a previous technology sales organization.
• A strong track record in sales.
• Demonstrate the necessary skills to negotiate issues with peers, partners and customers using a Win/Win philosophy.

Preferred qualifications and skills

• Bachelors or Master s degree or equivalent with a strong technical and business knowledge with complimentary skills to understand the customer’s business drivers and align to Cisco solutions.
• Solid understanding of IT Service Management and the ability to map differentiated Cisco Services into existing or IT Service landscapes.
• Ideally you have knowledge of Cisco services offerings, software portfolio, data & analytics, security and industry trends.

Employment details

• Location: Bangalore [India]

Additional role details

• Serves as the chief customer outcomes and services strategist, leading the overall services strategy and supporting teams.
• Drives incremental services growth through close coordination with the Account Team, developing the opportunity and driving it to closure to grow our Recurring Revenue business.
• Ensures our customers has the best support coverage and professional services aligned to the customers expected outcomes.
• Engages specialist teams to enhance the sales process and ensures effective partnership with Customer Success to enhance services adoption.
• Identifies and manages opportunities across a large mix of accounts to expand coverage and impact of services across new and existing customers/markets, leveraging customer and data insights to enhance service adoption.
• Builds and sustains strong, long-term relationships with customers.
• Collaborates with customers to create demand for new services aligned to customer’s desired outcomes and business needs, upsells/cross-sells additional solutions during new and renew pursuits.
• Conducts data analysis to uncover new opportunities, understand buying propensity, service availability, and potential for unattached products.
• Utilizes data to show customers need, implicate pain, and derive forecasts, setting weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales commitments.
• Stays informed about industry trends, market dynamics, and competitive landscapes.
• Aligned to accounts, territories and/or segments.
• Specialization and Focus - Specialized with intense focus on New and Renew Upsell of Premium Services, inserting them into a Buying Program, and including Point of Sale and Uncovered Product Attach.
• Customer Engagement and Accountability - 60% external customer or internal/external account team facing, Builds strong relationships with customers, partners, and Account Team to qualify opportunities and identify customer challenges.
• The Internal Sales Process - Sales process starts with participation in Strategic Account Planning, includes the Adoption Accountability Plan and concludes at deal closure, Spends majority of time on new opportunities and upselling our services during the renewal cycle; to enhance the value that our customer receives from our services.
• Corporate Interlock - High engagement and cross functional collaboration with the Account Team, CX product management, renewals, global services sales, and other functions (architectures, portfolio AE, etc.).
• Typical Sales Cycle - Medium to High Sales complexity, Average length of deal is 6 to 18-months depending on complexity of accounts/opportunities, Variable deal size, can be between $50K to over $1M.
• Success Measures - Offer penetration (Premium, New Technical and Multi-Year Services or Incubation Services).